FOSS Patents: Apple’s climate change hypocrisy and deceptive lobbying: ACT

Apple’s positions on climate change require better scrutiny (concerning its privateness and safety claims and different speaking factors). Let me begin with a quote from an article that appeared on the Tech Transparency Project web site on May 31, 2022:

‘Green’ Apple backs enterprise teams boycotting motion on climate change

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks a couple of ‘greener’ future. But his firm is a member of enterprise associations that combat efforts to cut back greenhouse gasoline emissions.

The Tech Transparency Project cites such teams as “the Texas Association of Business, which has questioned whether humans are causing climate change and has a long history of fighting regulations designed to curb carbon emissions.” And it says that seven of the business associations that Apple introduced in 2020 to be concerned within the right-to-repair laws oppose. The first one on the (alphabetical) listing: LAW | The App Association, an astroturfing group that Bloomberg revealed in September was overwhelmingly funded by Apple and falsely claimed to characterize the pursuits of small app builders.

Just a couple of week earlier than that Bloomberg articlewhich (as I additionally mentioned in my earlier put up) ought to deter any coverage maker from ever taking ACT severely, ACT took one alternative – which must be the final – to attempt to idiot the European Commission.

Thanks to the AskTheEU web site, it turned identified that on September 8, 2022, at 14:00 Brussels time, two unnamed representatives of ACT | The App(s) Association met with mrs. Alina-Stefania Ujupan and Mr. Alejandro Cainzos, members of the cupboard of the European Commission’s govt vice-president (in command of competitors enforcement and digital business coverage) Margrethe Vestager met as the next minutes of the assembly present (click on on the picture to enlarge or learn the textual content beneath the image):

This is the abstract:

“In a brief meeting, the App Association expressed its concerns about the draft ecodesign regulation for mobile phones, cordless phones and tablets, claiming that it gives users the ability to switch back to operating system versions older than the last two available This will create problems for application developers to ensure the cyber security of their applications. Cab Vestager noted the views expressed and recalled the important objectives of the Regulation to reduce electronic waste.” (emphasis added)

ACT – which receives the overwhelming majority of its funding from Apple and doesn’t even have common membership charges for small app builders – emailed Mr. Cainzos despatched. The topic line was “Meeting request with the application association on the new proposal for the ecodesign regulation.” LAW | The Applie Association mentioned that they wish to level out some issues [they] in regards to the proposals within the draft regulation” and requested:

“Would you be available for a short meeting in the next few weeks to further discuss the potential impact of this regulation small application developers?” (emphasis added)

The world’s richest company, lobbying towards environmentally sound insurance policies within the title of “small app developers” whereas participating in greenwashing…

There are merely two the reason why Apple does not need customers to have the ability to downgrade to older iOS variations:

• Apple needs customers to purchase new units as usually as potential.

• Apple needs to save lots of software program improvement prices, so they do not wish to maintain older iOS variations protected and guarantee backward compatibility of apps with older iOS variations.

Is this a priority for small app builders? Seriously, the common small app developer will not even concentrate on the European Commission making ready an eco-design regulation for cellphones, cordless telephones and tablets. ACT has a price range of round 10 million {dollars} and claims to characterize 5,000 small app builders, which might imply that the common member must pay an annual membership price of two,000 {dollars}. In actuality, Apple is footing the invoice, and these 5,000 “members” are only a declare. On ACT’s web site, one can solely discover just a few dozen corporations, and they’re principally service suppliers (versus app makers who publish their very own merchandise). I attended an ACT occasion in Berlin in September 2019, and I used to be positively the one app developer within the room…

Do small app builders have a “cybersecurity” drawback if customers can downgrade to older OS variations, as Apple’s astroturfers instructed the Commission?

To a actual app developer, what I can say is that, on the whole, fragmentation just isn’t in our curiosity, and it’s a concern that must be taken severely. I say so, despite the fact that I additionally advocate competitors enforcement towards Google within the Android context, the place Google makes “anti-fragmentation” arguments on a regular basis.

However, what makes no technical sense right here is that our personal apps would have “cyber security” issues if Apple merely allowed extra backwards compatibility. If our code is safe on the newest model of iOS, why would it not be insecure on an older model? Only if attraction doesn’t maintain older variations sufficiently safe.

Small app builders like my firm even have an issue with Apple’s deliberate product obsolescence. When we write software program for laptop working programs at the moment, we are able to depend on that software program to nonetheless be purposeful and accessible to finish customers in, say, ten years from now. On cell platforms, particularly iOS, we’re compelled to improve software program to newer API variations on a regular basis. Apple (and Google) can add options and nonetheless guarantee backwards compatibility. They might develop their APIs with out terminating outdated APIs after a short while.

One instance is that Apple determined to make model 2 (and consequently all subsequent variations) of its Swift programming language incompatible with model 1. This is as a result of Apple acknowledged some design flaws: there have been options in Swift 1 that originally appeared revolutionary, however adversely affected the readability of the code. Instead of remaining backwards appropriate, Apple stopped supporting newer iOS API variations in Swift 1. In 2018, Apple then gave builders an ultimatum: improve to a more moderen API model (which suggests upgrading from Swift 1 to a more moderen model of the language) by a sure date, or you’ll be able to now not replace your app — which actually wasn’t good for cybersecurity, as a result of builders should replace an app to repair a safety challenge within the code.

Simply put, Apple does not care in regards to the burden on builders of small apps, however its lobbyists posing as representatives of small builders hoped that the Commission could be swayed on that foundation. “Look at our poor fellows. Don’t you sympathize with us?” Astroturfing at its worst.

The finest a part of the minutes of that September 8 assembly between two members of EVP Vestager’s cupboard and ACT is that they emphasised the coverage purpose of waste discount, which to me means that ACT’s bogus small developer arguments had been unpersuasive.

The worst factor is that two (!) members of the cupboard of one of many key gamers of the European Commission wasted their treasured time with Apple-funded astroturfers. Perhaps they’d have canceled the assembly if the Bloomberg article about who is basically funding ACT had been revealed only a few weeks earlier (and if they’d seen it in that case).

Should ACT nonetheless get conferences with any member of the cupboard of any EU commissioner now that it has been uncovered as an Apploturfing operationought to somebody begin a petition for the UK to get a free Bloomberg subscription…

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